Sorana leaned back in her seat, having just watched the last bit of Valmecha vanish into the distance, and then turned to face Kaden once more. The tension between the two of them had still not fully dissipated, but this was something that Sorana wanted.
In the many years that Sorana had known Kaden, she had always found it difficult to stay mad at him. Seeing him do reckless things and break rules had become so commonplace to her, that she was barely even fazed by it anymore. However, she knew that she couldn't just let him get away with his misdeeds. To that end, she often stayed upset with him a bit longer than it actually took her to get over whatever disaster he'd caused. Though she admitted that it was a little deceiving, she felt that it was necessary in order to keep a young Lombax like him as much in line as was possible .
Kaden's most recent act of not only rampaging through the city, but doing so after Sorana had expressly told him not to, warranted a very long cold treatment. However, she was finding it hard to maintain her off-putting demeanor during such a joy filled time. She wanted desperately to just enjoy this trip on the planetary famous Quasar Express with her close friend. Luckily, she was able to stoke the flames of her anger by reminding herself that it was Kaden's fault that she couldn't do that.
On the other hand, Kaden seemed to be handling the trip just fine. Almost immediately after the train had left Valmecha station, he had begun to play around with one of the touch-panel control switches above the seats.
"What are you doing now?" Sorana asked him as flatly as she could, though she was sure she would either not understand what he was doing or not want to know.
"Just some adjustments," Kaden answered distractedly as he continued to fiddle with the device.
Sorana watched him work for a short while and tried to discern what was going through his head by studying how his face contorted into various expressions as he flipped through the panel's controls. To her it seemed like he was having trouble accomplishing what he wanted to do. That was when he pulled a small knife-like tool from seemingly thin air and raised it up to the panel's edges.
Sorana almost jumped out of her seat when she saw what he was about to do, "Kaden, you'd better not-"
But she was too late to stop him from prying the panel's screen partially out of the wall. He then pulled it out completely, letting it hang from the bundle of wires that still connected it through an open square hole, before he began digging through the wires in search of something.
"Don't worry," said Kaden offhandedly without looking up from what he was doing. "I'll put it back when I'm done and no one will know any better."
As he spoke, he removed a small device from his bag and began detaching various wires from the panel before placing them into the device.
Sorana was stunned silent by his actions. It wasn't so much 'what' he was doing that surprised her, but rather that he was doing it right in front of her while she was still 'angry'. Somewhere in her mind Sorana had been hoping that moving away from home would give Kaden a chance to start over, but it seemed that fairytale dream was dying before they even arrived.
"I can't believe you," she began to scold with genuine anger. "You're just determined to get yourself in trouble today, aren't you? Or are you just trying to get on my nerves?"
Kaden seemed to have finished what he was doing and finally turned to face Sorana, "Of course not," he declared defensively. "I don't ever intentionally try to annoy you. You just always seem determined to focus on the negatives. In fact, once I finally break whatever stupid encryption is on this control panel, I'll bet you'll even be pleased," he assured her confidently.
Sorana's face darkened slightly, "You're hacking the Quasar Express?" she questioned in a tone that was the opposite of pleased.
"See!" shouted Kaden accusingly, "You immediately hone in on anything negative and you don't even bother to look on the positive side."
"That's because there is no positive side with you," retorted Sorana. "Today alone you've broken dozens of city, federal, planetary, and probably even galactic laws, nearly gotten yourself killed, broke what I'm sure is your all-time record for total property damage done in a day, lied to your mother, and even broke your word to me. That seems pretty negative, or did I miss anything else?"
Kaden set his jaw firmly in place and didn't say anything. This was mostly because it was the first time he'd heard all of his most recent misdeeds summed up like that and it had left him without a response. It was also because he was trying to hide a small grin that threatened to reveal itself after he realized that he had in fact broken his property damage record.
The two eyed each other, Sorana's gaze daring Kaden to try and argue against her. Then, Kaden's expression changed as he got an update from his NID and he quickly returned to fiddling with the control panel. With a smile across his face, he lifted up the dangling screen and began to press through a series of icons, before the screen went blank and was replaced by a rotating shaded circle.
Kaden then released the panel and stood up, "It's all done," he informed Sorana while looking very pleased with himself.
Sorana was still mad, but genuinely curious as to what gave Kaden the ability to brush off her verbal assault so easily, "What's all don-" she began to ask, but she was interrupted by a soft rumbling coming from the floor and walls.
Slowly the small room that was their compartment began to extend away from the train. As it did so, the two curved couches began to move around the interior. Sorana stood up in surprise when her previously stationary seat shifted to a new position on the floor. She joined Kaden in the center as she watched them rotate around her.
Then the compartment stopped vibrating and the seats came to a halt in a position that was ninety degrees from their origin. One was now blocking the compartment's entrance while the other had placed itself directly under the compartment window. Everything was eerily quiet after that and Sorana was about to ask what the point of it had been, but before she could, the walls, floor and ceiling all disappeared.
Sorana let out a terrified shriek of surprise and jumped backwards after suddenly finding herself floating through the air with nothing to hold onto except for her friend. Kaden had managed to catch her after she'd sprung frightfully toward him, but he was having a tough time keeping them both from falling over as Sorana continued to fidget violently in panic.
It took a few seconds of holding her steady before her higher mental functions began to take over and she was able to realize that, although she couldn't see the room anymore, she could still feel the floor and she couldn't feel the wind.
With her mouth agape, Sorana looked around in confusion before turning to face Kaden, whom she was still clinging to, "What…" was all she could say as words failed to come out of her now dry throat.
Kaden smiled cheerfully at her, "It's called an observation compartment," he explained. "I looked up the design plans for the Quasar Express on the holonet a few days ago. While I read through it, I came across the details about it. They said that these compartments could extend out from the train and turn its outward facing wall and seating invisible. Though, the feature had been locked out for this trip, so I had to do a little tweaking to get it to work, but I think this should be worth it."
Sorana was now rapidly moving her gaze back and forth between the insanely high, dead drop that stretched out below them and the blatantly cheerful look on Kaden's face. Finally, complete comprehension dawned on Sorana's features, but the expression it caused had not been the one Kaden was expecting. With a mixed look of embarrassment and anger, Sorana punched Kaden squarely in the arm.
Kaden grunted in surprise and grabbed his arm painfully with the opposite hand, "Ah! What?!" he asked, utterly dumbfounded by her reaction.
Sorana pushed herself away from him, but began to stumble after suddenly finding herself flying through the air with nothing to hold onto. Kaden reached out instinctively to steady her again, but she held up a hand to stop him and recovered her footing on her own, before straightening herself up.
She then started feeling around the room until she made contact with the invisible compartment wall and then used it to steady herself as she walked around to the still visible couch in front of the doorway.
At last, after firmly placing her posterior into the seat and removing the loose hair from her face, Sorana took a steadying breath and fixed Kaden with an angry glare, "You're supposed to tell people before you make the ground disappear!" she growled furiously. "That settles it then, your goal today is clearly to make me as absolutely miserable as possible."
Kaden looked hurt, "No it's not," he countered honestly. "I thought you'd like it."
"And exactly which part of thinking I was going to fall to my death and being scared out of my fur was I supposed to like?" she demanded.
Kaden was downtrodden. He honestly hadn't expected Sorana to be mad. He simply shrugged as a response and moved to the side of the compartment. In doing so he moved out of the compartment's forward view. With Kaden no longer in the way, Sorana was able to finally see the purpose of the compartment's feature… and it left her speechless.
The vast surface of Fastoon stretched out unobscured into the horizon before her. From where she sat in the now invisible room, she could see for miles in a dozen different directions. Clouds hovered intermittently around, making her feel like she was floating amongst them. The bright blue of the sky reached all the way to the very end of her vision. She could see the rays of Fastoon's sun shining down on the valley and hills below. She could clearly see both the tops of several clouds that blocked the light as well as the shadows they cast below. There was even a tall mountain in the distance that stretched high into the sky. It pierced through a wall of white cloud before reemerging on the other side where she was able to clearly see its peak. There would have been no way to see it from the ground.
Sorana then looked straight down through the clear floor and saw the ground far below. The compartment wasn't completely invisible. Its walls had only vanished up to the part that would have been blocked by the rest of the train. However, this didn't impede the miraculous view. There was more than enough scenery to make her feel lost in the sky as she sat on what felt like the edge of existence.
It took almost a minute before she finally began to recover from her astonishment. It was only afterward that she remembered Kaden who was off to her side. He was once again looking extraordinarily pleased with himself, which Sorana soon realized was because of her stunned expression. She quickly tried to cover up her amazement, but it was already far too late.
"Fine," she sighed reluctantly.
Kaden raised his arms up in joy and did a small victory strut around the small compartment to celebrate. Sorana tried not to look at him as he did so. It was always hard to stay mad at Kaden, mostly because he had a tendency to pull things like this almost as often as he broke the law. The truth was that Sorana had very much been looking forward to seeing the expanse of Fastoon from far above on the skytrain and this surprise from Kaden was like a dream come true, but, by accidentally letting him know that, she felt like she'd lost somehow.
At last Kaden finished his victory dance and then walked over to Sorana before sitting down on the couch next to her. This came as a small surprise to her as she realized how close together they were. With the other couch invisible, it was obvious that Kaden wouldn't want to sit on it and even if he did, he'd be right in the way of the view.
The only remaining couch had been shrunk in order to accommodate the drink bar on the end of it. Even though the seat was made for two people to fit comfortably, somehow having all the room of the sky made sitting together seem… even closer. If Kaden was thinking of anything similar however, he showed no signs as he eagerly explored the contents of the drink bar.
"Would you like anything?" he asked Sorana courteously while his one hand moved around on the other side of the clear refrigeration barrier.
"Oh, uh sure. Anything's fine," she answered after being interrupted from her musings.
Kaden nodded and pulled out two neon green bottles and handed one to Sorana. She looked at the bright, almost glowing, drink and mentally chided herself. She should have known Kaden would grab the strangest looking thing they had. She drank it regardless and the two of them sat together while enjoying the amazing view.
However, as the seconds passed in silence, Sorana just couldn't seem to get comfortable. She was close enough to Kaden to feel his body heat and hear his, admittedly loud, breathing and occasional slurping. This caused a pervasive feeling of awkwardness to linger no matter how much she tried to banish it from her mind.
The situation was also uncharacteristically quiet as well. She had expected Kaden to either start tapping away on his digi-pad or strike up a monologue about something technological, but instead the young Lombax just sat there with eyes half-closed as he looked out across the skies.
'He looks tired,' Sorana thought and she figured that it must be due to whatever he'd been doing this morning. She wanted to say something to fill the silence and this was such a big moment in their lives that she could barely sit still, let alone sleep.
'Well, if he's tired then that's his fault,' she told herself before finally breaking the silence, "This is kind of a small room isn't it?" she commented experimentally.
Kaden seemed to slowly rouse himself from his half-conscious state before yawning deeply, "Well that kind of makes sense," he began as Sorana took another sip from her drink. "This is a 'honeymoon room' after all."
Sorana choked on the mouthful of green liquid in her throat and fought to prevent any of it from escaping her mouth. Kaden didn't seem to notice her choking fit as he scratched the back of his head absentmindedly and yawned again.
Sorana was sure she must have misheard him, "W-what was that?" she croaked, a little liquid still stuck in her airways.
Kaden glanced over at her and raised an eyebrow, "A honeymoon," he repeated. "You know, like when two people get married and then they-"
"I know what a honeymoon is, Kaden," Sorana interrupted abrasively. "I'm asking what you meant by saying that this was a 'honeymoon room'?"
"Oh, that," Kaden said as he realized what she meant. "Well, when I found the information about the Quasar Express there was a little engineering note in the design schematics. Even though these kinds of rooms are officially labeled as observation compartments, some engineer had apparently nicknamed them 'honeymoon rooms'."
"Why would you want to sit in here if you knew that?!" Sorana questioned with surprising intensity.
Kaden was taken aback by her aggressive manner and eyed her curiously, "Why?" he repeated in confusion. "Because I thought you'd like the view from here."
Sorana eyed him oddly, "And that's the only reason?" she pressed.
Kaden pursed his lips and looked away for a second, "Actually, there was another reason," he admitted slightly ashamedly. "I had an ulterior motive besides the view when I picked this compartment."
Sorana knew she'd been digging, but was totally surprised to find anything. She gulped involuntarily before asking further, "And what motive would that be?"
Kaden knew that he couldn't hide the truth anymore, that effort had caused nothing but trouble so far.
Kaden took a deep breath and sighed in defeat, before turning to look Sorana in the eyes, "The truth is…" he began hesitantly, "The truth is that… this is one of the few compartments on the train that has a fully stocked drink bar," he explained guiltily, before holding up his almost empty bottle of green liquid. "You can't even get this stuff in Valmecha! I read that it's some kind of special drink made only in Nova Academy and I had to try it." And he downed the last of his bottle with on greedy chug.
Sorana felt herself deflate before turning away and letting out a long sigh, "I hate how you do that," she muttered under her breath.
"Hm? What was that?" Kaden asked as he put down the now empty bottle.
"It was nothing," Sorana answered dismissively, upset with herself more than anything.
Kaden studied Sorana's somber appearance for a short while, but eventually shrugged it off as she had said it was nothing. Simultaneously, Sorana decided not to let Kaden's usual lack of tact ruin her experience.
Shaking any mildly distracting thoughts away from her mind, Sorana reset herself and began pointing out various landmarks and geographical features that she recognized to Kaden as the train blazed its way through the sky. Sorana had always held a deep love for all things natural and serene. It was actually a preference that clashed with Kaden's obsession for everything artificial and Lombax-made. However, he showed no signs of irritation when she went into lengthy details about the wildlife or history of the areas they passed over.
That was until they crossed a featureless desert. Once again there was silence as Sorana had nothing else to talk about, so she took a breather and waited for something interesting to show up again.
As the two sat in silence for a few minutes, Sorana felt a weight on her shoulder, "What is it?" she asked, thinking it was Kaden trying to get her attention.
Kaden didn't answer, though, and the weight didn't go away. So she turned at last to see what he wanted only to find that he had completely fallen asleep and was now dozing soundly, with his shoulder rubbing against hers. She shook her head reproachfully at her friend. She was now sure that he had exhausted himself during his earlier rampage and could see that it had finally caught up with him, in force.
Sorana tried to push Kaden back up so that he wouldn't be leaning at such an odd angle, but he was much more difficult to move than she'd thought, "Come on, Kaden," she commanded as she strained against his dead weight. Despite Sorana's pushing and words, Kaden showed no signs of waking. He was out cold now and the only way she was going to move him was by force.
Try as she might, however, he was very uncooperative to handle. Every time she did actually manage to get him back up straight, he would just fall over the other way and sprawl himself over drink bar. She would then try to pull him back toward her again, but then he'd just fall back over to her side.
Sorana was beginning to contemplate leaving him draped across the bar as she pulled him back away from it for the second time, but then she lost her grip on his collar and he fell across her lap. She stayed still for an awkward few seconds before looking around the room as if she expected someone to be watching.
She eyed the peacefully sleeping Lombax suspiciously, "You'd better not be doing this on purpose," she warned, but there was no response to her words.
At this point she considered her options. She knew that any attempt to sit him upright again would probably fail, not to mention be much more difficult now from his current position. She could also just push him off of her and onto the floor. If the impact woke him than he could just sit himself back up, but if he didn't then he'd at least be out of the way.
As she debated the choice in her head, she watched as Kaden breathed in softly before exhaling back out. The sight stirred something within Sorana and began to give her a strange feeling. This was actually the first time she'd seen Kaden asleep when no one else was around. The difference between the usual, chaotic, 'something is going to blow up any second' feeling that she typically got while around him and the unbelievably peaceful atmosphere that surrounded him now was almost unsettling.
At that moment, it was hard for her to believe that the Lombax on her lap was the cause of frequent havoc and mayhem across a massive, advanced Lombax city. He was like a child sleeping, which made Sorana wonder if it might have been some kind of maternal instinct that made her finally decide that he could stay where he was for the time being.
"The things I let you get away with," she said with a shake of her head. Resigning herself to her fate as a pillow, Sorana leaned back in her seat and tried to get as comfortable as possible before returning to enjoying the magnificent view.
It wasn't long however, before her attention returned to the sleeping Lombax on her lap. It started out simple at first. She gave Kaden's face a few experimental pokes here and there to make sure he was really still asleep. She also took a picture of him on her PDA for reference and possible blackmail later. Next she started to get a bit more adventurous.
Playing with his ears and molding forced expressions onto his face turned out to be much more fun than she'd ever have thought possible, or would ever admit in the future. Then she began to wonder if an unconscious Kaden was a better listener than the conscious one was.
Sorana leaned in close to Kaden's ears, "You will follow all of Nova Academy's rules," she ordered in a hypnotic tone that was also tinged with a hint of laughter. "Junk food tastes baaaaad, vegetables taste gooooooood." Kaden's ears began to twitch as she spoke and his lips began to move as if he was trying to mumble something. Sorana's face lit up at the thought that she might actually be getting through Kaden's thick skull for once. "You will also listen to whatever Sorana tells you, from now on," she added with a huge playful grin on her face.
"Sorana…" breathed Kaden quietly.
Sorana froze at the sound of her own name. It did not seem to her like Kaden had regained consciousness, meaning that he was talking in his sleep. This made the young, white-furred Lombax curious as to what her friend's subconscious mind was thinking about.
Again she leaned in close to his ear, "What about Sorana?" she whispered carefully before leaning her own ears over to his lips.
Kaden's eyes rolled around under his eyelids and slowly he began to speak, "Sor… ana," he repeated quietly as Sorana hovered over him, "she's…" he continued, but trailed off again.
"What about Sorana?!" she asked again determinedly.
Sorana's face was practically touching Kaden's now as she listened carefully for anything else he might say. In all the years she had known him, she had been sure that not even his own parents ever really understood what went through his mind. Everything he said, everything he did always seemed to be part of some grand plan and he always made it seem like even his mistakes had been done on purpose.
It was, therefore, very hard to get a gauge on his real personality as there was no way to know for sure if his actions were a result of his true feelings, or if he'd only done them to make it seem like they were. Now, however, she was possibly mere seconds away to hearing a thought that was completely uncensored by his conscious mind and it was something about her, apparently.
"Sorana…" Kaden said again, much clearer this time.
'What was he going to say?' Sorana wondered excitedly. She wanted to know so badly that her heart rate was increasing. She didn't know what she expected to hear. She didn't even have a clue what she could expect to hear. 'What did she want to hear?'
"is…" continued Kaden in a whisper so quiet that the sound of Sorana's heart beating in her ears almost drowned it out. Sorana strained desperately to listen.
Just as the next word was on the tip of Kaden's lips, the room began to shake once more and Kaden's voice was drowned out in the sound of electrical gears and hydraulic systems coming online. The walls reappeared with a rapid change in lighting and the seats began to rotate back to their original positions.
The sudden movement of the room and her seat caught Sorana by surprise as she was perched precariously over Kaden's lips. She almost fell forward on top of him, but was able to throw her hand out across the seat to stop herself.
Unfortunately... her hand managed to find Kaden's tail lying on the seat behind him and she was unable to stop herself from putting her weight on it.
Kaden's eyes snapped open in shock and he bolted upright reflexively.
Before Sorana could even blink, Kaden's face was suddenly inches from hers. It happened in an instant. So fast that she had no time to react and her heart barely had to time to skip a beat. Then time seemed to slow down. First, their noses touched and then… their skulls collided.
The hollow clack of bone striking bone echoed through the small compartment space, but it was nothing compared to the ringing of bells that rocked the two Lombaxes' brains.
"Aaaaahhhh!" bellowed Kaden as he rolled away onto the compartment floor and thrashed about with his hands clutching his forehead. "What happened?"
Sorana clamped her eyes shut and pressed her palm tightly to her now pounding cranium. Her head was spinning from the impact and she had barely been able to hear Kaden's words, "You woke up and slammed your face into mine," she explained through gritted teeth before lying down woozily across the still moving couch.
"Oh wow, what is your head made out of, Raritanium?" Kaden asked rhetorically in both amazement and agony.
Sorana's head was hurting too much for her to retort, so she just ignored the jab and let the throbbing slowly ease itself away. In the meantime, the seats were returned to their original spots and the compartment fully retracted into the train.
Kaden eventually managed to pull himself up onto the newly visible couch opposite Sorana and the two now eyed each other weakly through painfully squinted gazes.
"Why did the compartment go back to normal?" Sorana asked after her head had cleared a little.
Kaden scrunched his face against the nausea he felt so that he could think, "It has an auto-retract sequence for when the train is coming up to a docking station," he explained groggily. "We're probably on approach to the next stop."
Sorana sat up with her hand still on her head and took a peek out of the window. The bright light from outside was hard to look at, but she did manage to see that they were very far off of the ground.
"Then why aren't we getting any lower?" she asked after confirming that the train wasn't decreasing its altitude.
Kaden blinked hard several times as his eyes adjusted to the light, "That's because we're not headed for anything on the ground," he explained. "Geta Ciel should be around here at this time of day, so we're probably headed there."
Sorana leaned back and nodded her understanding, but immediately regretted the slight cranial movement.
Geta Ciel was a flying city with one half of it hanging down in Fastoon's upper atmosphere and the other half linked to a massive starport anchored in the planet's high orbit. The city acted as both a large shipyard where some of Fastoon's greatest, capital-class ships had been built and as a starport for starships that were far too large to enter the atmosphere.
It didn't have a permanent location on the planet, though. Retaining a stable orbit in space meant that it had to move at a very rapid pace. It was typically able to circle the planet nearly three times in a day. This allowed the city to function as a mobile port city, able to deliver its material all over the planet with great efficiency by simply waiting until it was above its materials' destination.
Sure enough, just as Kaden had said, the hulking form of a flying metal metropolis loomed out into view ahead of the train a short while later. About a minute or so after that, the entire train had flown into one of the city's skytrain docks, similar to the ones in Valmecha. The only thing that could be seen from the window now was the heavy metal walls of the city.
Due to the thin air of the upper atmosphere, the inhabited parts of Geta Ciel were sealed in an airtight environment. The Quasar Express was too large to be sealed in completely, so only the front was docked and pressurized by large rubber seals that closed around it like giant lips wrapping around the front sections of the train to allow passengers to board.
Suddenly Kaden's face changed from painful grimace to a focused one. Then his eyes looked up to the ceiling, but not at anything specific. Sorana recognized the telltale signs of someone using an integrated NID function and knew that Kaden must be doing something with his neural computer, but would have to wait for him to tell her about it if he decided to.
Kaden blinked hard to close out of whatever he was doing and then turned to face Sorana with a grin, "I just got a message from Alister," he explained. "He says that he arrived in Geta Ciel a few hours ago and is boarding the Quasar Express right now. I gave him our compartment number, so he should be here any minute."
"Oh," was Sorana's only response to Kaden's news. She had known beforehand that Alister would be joining them at Nova Academy this year, but she hadn't expected it to be so soon and was somewhat disappointed that her and Kaden's time alone together was over already. Especially considering how little of it Kaden had actually been fully awake for.
Kaden raised an eyebrow at Sorana's odd response, "Is that a problem?" he asked.
Sorana smiled disarmingly, "No, it isn't that," she assured him. "It's just that my head's still spinning from the trauma it's suffered," she explained, turning his focus back on how he'd just head-butted her.
Kaden folded his arms and stared back indignantly, "It wasn't my fault, at least not completely. I must have rolled over on my tail or something. You can't even begin to understand how much that can hurt." Sorana tried to hide any sign of guilt from her face. "Come to think about it," Kaden continued as he recalled his first moments of consciousness, "why was your face so close to mine, anyway?"
Sorana's facial muscles stiffened in a well-practiced method used to prevent her from showing any hints of what she was actually thinking. She really didn't have a decent excuse for why she'd been in such an embarrassing position and she definitely wasn't about to tell Kaden the truth about how she'd coddled his head in her lap while trying brainwash and interrogate his subconscious.
She swallowed to clear her throat as the short silence began to stretch and Kaden's eyes began to grow suspicious, "Well… that was… I was trying to-" she began, but she was saved from further scrutiny when the door to their compartment slid open.
"Greetings, fellow Photons!" yelled the white furred, red striped Lombax standing in the doorway, referring to them both as Nova Academy's official mascot: a photon.
Kaden and Sorana both stood up as he walked in, "Hello, Alister," said Sorana with a formal tone and a well mannered bow of greeting.
Alister returned the greeting with his own slight bow of the head, "Hello, Sorana, good to see you again." Alister then turned to Kaden, "What did you do?" he asked before Kaden even had the chance to greet him as well.
"What?" was all Kaden could say, not sure of what he was being accused of so suddenly (though sure the accusation was just). Alister simply pointed to the displaced touch panel that was still hanging out of the wall. Kaden saw what he was pointing to, "Oh, that," he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "I'll show you later."
Alister shook his head, "Same old Kaden. Although I guess I would have been surprised to find the Quasar Express still in one piece with you onboard."
Kaden smiled, "Thank you," he said, wrongfully taking Alister's words as a compliment.
Alister smiled back, "Anyway, what were you saying in your message about some special juice? It was a long flight from Kreeli and I could use a good drink."
Kaden nodded eagerly and went to retrieve the green drink from the bar as Alister took a seat on the larger couch. Kaden found another bottle of the strange neon liquid and tossed it to Alister before walking over to join him. The train started moving moments later and the three of them chatted happily as it did so until they were far enough away from Geta Ciel to reactivate the observation mode.
Kaden immediately set to work reinitiating the compartment setting, but Sorana objected, "Won't that make things a little awkward with three of us?" she asked, concerned that at least one of them would have to sit out in space on an invisible couch.
Kaden shook his head, "Oh, no. I can adjust all of that from here," he dismissed.
Just like before, the room began to rumble and the compartment began to extend out and away from the train, except this time the seats didn't move. Sorana then realized that it had been Kaden's decision to effectively remove the larger couch earlier and she immediately squashed the tiny thought that he might have had an ulterior motive in doing so before it took root.
Just like before, the compartment stopped vibrating once it was fully extended and then there was an eerie silence.
"And what was the point of that?" Alister asked, seeming more interested in his beverage than the compartment.
As if in reply, the walls, floor, and ceiling all disappeared. The older Lombax yelped in surprise at suddenly finding the floor beneath him replaced by a several mile deep, dead-drop and leapt up onto his seat, while gripping the couch cushion in a twin death hold.
He continued to stare in horror at the massive height for several seconds until he slowly began to realize he wasn't going to fall and started to look around in confusion. When he found that the outer wall had vanished along with the floor,comprehension began to dawn on his features. Then he spotted Kaden sitting next to him with a huge, self-satisfied grin on his face.
Alister's expression darkened and in a flash of movement he had put Kaden in a headlock, "You're supposed to tell people before you make the ground disappear," he growled into his friend's ear, but he said it with a large grin on his face as well.
"Ha!" shouted Sorana with a jab of her finger, feeling validated at having her own words and reaction used by another.
The two male Lombaxes froze where they were and both of them looked up at Sorana with a questioning expression. Sorana pulled her arm back and straightened herself before clearing her throat and returning to her formal sitting posture. Alister shrugged and brushed of the outburst before turning back to the task at hand and tightening his grip on Kaden's head.
Sorana had only met Alister one other time before now, when he had come to visit Kaden in Valmecha. Up until that point, Sorana had thought Kaden's story of actually making a new friend had been a fictional one. Alister had been seventeen at the time, which had made him about a year older than Sorana.
Kaden had met Alister Azimuth just over a year ago. At the time Kaden's father had been contracted as an engineer for Azimuth Trillium Mining Industries. Kaden had accompanied his father on several trips to Kreeli Comet, an extremely rich source of Trillium ore, where he learned about and sometimes helped in his father's task of designing mining rigs and other equipment used for ore harvesting.
Alister had also been on Kreeli during one of these visits, similarly in order to learn from the company's CEO, his father, about various aspects of the family business.
Kaden and Alister had bumped into each other while exploring the comet's surface. They became friends following a hover-boot race that ended in a tie. After which they swapped NID link numbers, though, mostly out of a desire for a rematch.
Now the three of them were heading for a new life together at Nova Academy
AN:
Geta Ciel - is a starport city. It's name comes from the word 'ciel', which is french for 'sky' or 'heaven' and the word 'geta' which is Indonesian for throne. Geta Ciel is the 'Throne of the Sky'.